Seeking Arcadia
by TwiliMewtwo
Summary: A spin-off of one of my D&D campaigns. Desterting her home, becoming an AWOL commander of the High Elf Legion, Arcadia felt she had no choice after all she had witness from her own Legion. However she faces the cruel realization she might have to survive the ongoing zombie apocalypse or find a new group to join up before the madden zombie plague gets to her.
1. Prologue

Is this thing on? Yeah, okay. Let's see, where should I begin? My name? Yeah, there we go. Okay, I'm Tatuana Estelle, a half-elf who is currently not dying, very surprising, in the zombie apocalypse. However, this story is not my story, this story is about a high-elf named Arcadia Noric, my only true friend. Here we go.

The muffled sounds a leaves crunching beneath the boots and a young-looking women, her long light brown hair tied up in a messy braid bouncing up and down as it hits her back. Her face smeared with dirt and other residue from the forest darkening her pale complexion, her ears were pointed, a tell tale sign of elven blood,

The women slowed as she approached a vibrant green bush, it's leaves looked a lot like holly leaves, waxy and prickly. Gently, she removed the so-called bush to reveal a decaying body. Most of it's features were gone with age but it was apparent it was female and suffered from blunt damage to the skull, based on the dents just above the ear. That's about all someone could tell from the body.

As the elf quickly whipped her head from side-to-side, just to be certain no one followed her here, she undid her hair, letting the messy brown hair fall. She combed a part of her hair near her face and as she reached for a knife. Swiftly, she cut a lock of her hair off. Then she dug through a small satchel, retrieving a piece of yellowed parchment. She unrolled the parchment, a note written in scrawny letters as if it was hurriedly written. Her green eyes scanned the note before a sly smile formed from the corners of her thin lips. Once again she took the knife and placed the blade on her hand. She raced the blade against her hand, drawing blood from the wound. She decorated the note with her blood and when she finished, wrapped up the wound. Her note was almost done. She took her locks of hair and placed it in the center of the parchment before rewrapping it back. She stuffed the note on the decaying body's arm.

Her plan was nearly finished. She took a deep breath and started to unbutton her jacket. As she unbuttoned the finish one, she slid off the jacket and set it on her lap. She looked the various pins spewed about as she started to take one off. She held the pin in her hand, three stars, a commander's pin. She reached for the jacket on the corpse and secured the pin on it's own jacket before returning to her own. Next, she removed a longer pin made from carved wood with metal smelted among the edges. As she flipped the pin over in her hand, her eyes looked at the letters that read out Arcadia Noric. It was a name tag, her name tag that she's worn since her joining of the military. Her eye hinted of remorse as she pinned the name tag on the corpse. She had given this corpse her name, her own name: the only thing left that she actually owned and just gave it away so willingly to something that won't use it.

Arcadia finished dressing the corpse, it was at least a convincing doppelgänger, just enough to buy her enough time to make a new life for herself, possibly more. For all she knew, they would be completely convinced it was her and just leave it at that. Though she knew that would be wishful thinking, the High-Elf Legion, her military force, is always thorough on their autopsies, something she'd witnessed many times from watching her own men get their examination.

Rustling from behind her broke her train of thought as she quickly rose from her spot, her jacket fell in her hand. It was silent for a few seconds and Arcadia thought it could've been an animal or even just the wind. However, that unmistakable sound of groans broke the silence. She had lingered too long and she looked back at the corpse and kicked the holly leaves, although very messily, back on before sprinting away from the scene.

**Author's Note**

Hey guys, this is my first story in well, awhile. This is just the prologue of a, hopefully, long story about an alternate version of a few of me and my friend's D&D characters. Hoping for some constructive criticism and most of all, I hope you enjoy!


	2. Chapter 1: Recollection of Thoughts

Light drew dimmer in the thick green forest as the sun giving off it's last light for the day. The air grew chilly as the night drew closer and stars started to dot the sky. Surviving alone in the day was one thing but surviving at night was another, even with a group of people. The darkness of night sapped energy from travelers as drowsiness took it's toll. Most would be required to rest, to sleep but once you take your guard down, death was all but certain from the predators that lurked in the veil of darkness.

"Damn..." Arcadia cursed under her breath. Although she left in the early morning before anyone else would have awoken, her time was limited before day fully ended. She had expected to reach another survival group before sundown but that plan was now shot. Despite all the calculation she had done prior to her defection, Arcadia's miscalculation on where she thought the camp was might cost her her life.

The unnerving silence did not help the mood. The forest seemed too quiet at this time. At night was when the undead really sprung to life with the mind numbing moans filling the stiff air and their rotting stench could be smelled from yards away. Their limp legs moved closer to the nearest victim, hoping to get their food and turn it's meal into one of them. The undead has always plagued Altwidus, even before the so called zombie apocalypse started two hundred years back. However their numbers were small and fragmented, so much so that they were easily contained in the nearby swampland. It remained that way for centuries until a faithful day when the moon turned red and that was when it all changed.

Arcadia was only four at the time when the blood moon occurred. She had very little memories of the events only the times following shortly after. With her over two hundred years of living through this apocalypse, all memories of her younger years were dim at best. She only remembered the moon, the panic, and the end results. All the little details were withered away, gone with time.

At first was the moon, the moon the shade of crimson. It was around ten o'clock at night when the moon's shade was noticeably red in the sky. It illuminated the surrounding areas with an eerie crimson color. The water looked like freshly drawn blood, the clouds were painted the deep red color, and the forest was drowned in red as far as the eye can see. The area looked hellish with the only color seen was the crimson but a the time, little did the inhabitants know that the real hell had yet to come.

With the unusual display of the moon soon after came the panic. No one knew what really was a blood moon nor what it meant. No history textbook or old script ever told of the moon turning to such a shade of red. Naturally most people will find it to be mysterious and even sparking fear with this new and unusual event that has happened. And with most unnatural and unknown sort of thing happens, most people will fear it for it is unknown and what'll happen or what'll do. Do most people fall into a panic, they find someplace to hide, run indoors, push and shove their way to shelter, and even losing their sense of selflessness in hopes to preserve their own lives and safety. The event of the blood moon, everyone felt something off about it so they disregarded the lives of loved ones, like they where in a fear-induced trance to get to some sort of shelter from the moon. Many young children where left in the streets with many people trampled to the ground, too weak to move after in initial chaos. For soon the real danger was about to arrive and destroy what little harmony the sun-human species lived together. To drag to the different races into turmoil against each other and cause schisms among them and destroy what little trust they have with each other.

Though the schism of the races was a result of what happened, it was not directly after the event of the blood moon. The direct result was the start of the real threat at the time, to rapid increase of the activity of the undead in our world. During that time, there was a change in the behavior of the undead for they always acted alone, no one believed they were even capable of working in a horde due to the obvious lack of brains they possess. After the blood moon, it was like they started working in a sort of hive mind, gain the ability to work together and they seemed to all have one goal, spreading their strange, infectious virus to all living things.

After the undead sprung to at least a semi-conscious hive mind state, all hell broke lose for everyone was not expecting the sudden spike of aggression from the undead. They all broke lose from the swamplands of Altwidus and started to attack nearby villages, sacking them, and turning the residence into one of them. Word spread quickly of the attacks and all the races built defenses against the rising threat of the undead. However how they should deal with this problem conflicted between all the races. The elves wanted to try to contain them again, they thought that it would be the most beneficial for the lands since the undead were still apart of the food chain and it could disrupt the environment by taking out a piece of it. The dwarves wanted to eradicate all the undead before they could spread their disease any further, they believed that they were far too dangerous to keep them in their current state. The rest of the races often stood with one of those two ideas of the undead. However due to the differences between all the races, they only grew further and further apart. With this growing aggravation, that soon lead to the schism of races. Most of the races followed their own ideology and formed their own militant group such as the High Elf Legion, the Dwarven Armada, and even a few groups of multiple species are often called the Survivalists, though they are often small and scarce.

All these thoughts came flooding into Arcadia's head as she laid her back against a tree, perhaps the idea of running away from the High Elf Legion to one of these Survivalists helped resurface the memories of her past despite her young age. She shook her head, her eyebrows lowered as she felt a twinge of anger at her Legion. She believed in the conservation and containment of the undead like her heritage of elves believed but their course of action was something Arcadia could not stand behind. She shook her head more violently to get the thoughts from her head. She should not be focusing on the High Elf Legion or the Survivalists at this point but on her own survival.

With her sore muscles, she decided to climb the tree she was using for support. It was safer than sleeping on the ground but still a gamble. She tried to prepare herself for an all-nighter but her mind was too weary and her eyelids heavy. As she reached a stable branch, her eyes couldn't stay open and she drifted to sleep despite her best efforts.


End file.
